Saturday, December 13, 2014

Geeky B/X D&D Love

I am a computer scientist by trade and I used to work a lot on programming languages. Specifically I worked on what (at least a certain community of researchers) calls "modular programming languages," a fancy way of saying "languages designed in the style of Niklaus Wirth" for the most part. Wirth and friends were very active in the 1960s when ALGOL 60 was "en vogue" as the "academically respectable" counterpoint to FORTRAN and COBOL, those drooling ogres that were even then teaching us how not to do it.

There's a famous 1973 keynote address entitled "Hints on Programming Language Design" given by Tony Hoare (who I'd consider to be one of those friends of Wirth) which was later published in various places including this technical report. In it, Tony finds a wonderful way of expressing just how much he respected ALGOL 60 and just how terrible he thought many of the more recent languages were. This is what he said:

The more I ponder the principles of language design, and the techniques which put them into practice, the more is my amazement and admiration of ALGOL 60. Here is a language so far ahead of its time, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

Now some may think that this is pure arrogance and venom and that it's no wonder that an "old fart" would say it. But it's also a very witty declaration of love for ALGOL 60. As I've been playing around with the various versions of D&D in recent years, I started feeling exactly the same way about B/X. So paraphrasing Tony Hoare, I would like to publicly state the following:

The more I ponder the principles of role-playing game design, and the mechanics which put them into practice, the more is my amazement and admiration of B/X D&D. Here is a role-playing game so clean, so concise, yet so complete, that it was not only an improvement on its predecessors, but also on nearly all its successors.

Of course I am now an "old fart" myself and I am sure many out there will find my (derivative) statement arrogant and venomous in the extreme. But it's also a (somewhat?) witty declaration of love for B/X D&D. One that I can only hope will inspire a few of you who have never looked at B/X before to actually take a peek. It's well worth it.

8 comments:

  1. I agree. Even though Mentzer red box was the first RPG I personally owned it was my acquisition of the B/X Expert book a few months later (beat up used copy) that had what was going to be a more profound and lifelong impact. Such a fantastic game. Succinct, lovely, and soooooo easy to house rule. I blame B/X for my inclination to focus on levels 1-14 and basically ignore anything higher. What was given in B/X seems like just enough to do the trick. Any more can be added very easily by invention or robbing BECMI or AD&D or anything else you like.

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    1. I think everyone tinkers with it to some extent. I have a bunch of house rules and an equipment list that takes things from all over the place (BECMI and AD&D in particular). But B/X provides such a wonderful "common core" with all the essentials to play D&D nicely laid out and easy enough to grok. I guess BECMI and later stuff was designed to be even easier for beginners, but I think you learn best at a table with more experienced players anyway. In the end, the most important thing to import from BECMI may be Bargle. :-)

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  2. I wholeheartedly agree! I actually started with the B/E of BECMI before "graduating" to AD&D and all its successor editions, and for pure simplicity and enjoyment of play, nothing beats B/X--and yes, that includes BECMI itself. (Though there's something to be said for Mentzer's Companion Set domain rules, the only rules of their kind ever developed for D&D.) Thanks to WotC for making the pdfs available!

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    1. The rules for domains did work for us when we briefly played at that level back in the day, but I would think that with "Adventurer Conqueror King" and "An Echo, Resounding" out there we'd have something better by now? Note that I didn't read either one of those in detail, personally I tend to focus on levels 1-12 and I don't worry about domain-level play too much. I've been tempted though, and I should really read those two systems over Christmas.

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    2. I haven't played ACKs yet. How are its domain rules, really?

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    3. As I said, I have not read either in detail yet, but the following thread has a lot of interesting stuff (including an extended discussion between the respective authors/designers): http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=21979

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  3. Moldvay Basic is, to my mind, the model example of an RPG rulebook.

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    1. One of my pet projects used to be a rewrite of B/X targeting the magic Holmes page count of 48. I never made much progress but if someone else were to do it I'd be super-stoked. :-)

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